Ironman Lake Placid Week 20 Mini Camp-Day 2

Saturday

I awoke to my Jawbone Up vibrating away at around 7:15am. A quick Heart Rate variability check revealed a 74 and to “continue training as usual”. Gitty-up! Next was to fuel up with a banana, raspberry, spinach, and beet smoothie. A much more normal, at least to me, alternative than pancakes. Beets are supposed to give you the ability to carry more oxygen in your blood similar to what blood doping does. Even if it is a placebo effect I will take it. They taste good too.

I had hopes of getting out the door by 8am, but as usual I tend to poke around in the morning and it takes me awhile to get going. Eventually I got all my nutrition stuff ready to go, oiled up my chain and pumped up my tires. I was on the road a little before 10AM. With a forecasted 6 hour ride I would get done around 4PM. It looked to be a nice day, so I might as well use it all up. It was also a bit cool in the early morning, so I didn’t feel like dragging arm warmers and all that crap along too. The only bad thing was the wind was supposed to pick up as the day went on, but I am pretty used to that with all the windy days I encountered this year.

Horse Farm and Ski Jumps on River Rd.

I headed out River Rd and jumped on Rt 73 at the ski jumps. The stretch from there to Keene is the worst part of the whole race course. The road is so mangled, especially on the shoulders, that you must be on high alert the whole time. With traffic along side of you too creates an even more tension. There was a traffic light at the Cascade Lakes where they are doing some road construction. It actually was pretty nice if you let all the cars go, then follow behind them and let it fly. You can pretty much guarantee no cars from there to about half way down Cascade mountain descent since it is a pretty long light. The descent down to Keene is a bit scary at times due to the poor road conditions and the high speeds.

The Moose is Loose

Pilots View

One down into Keene I can breathe a big sigh of relief. From here to the town of Jay it is big shoulders and fairly flat terrain. It is cruising mode and I just love this stretch. The out-and-back section to Ausable Forks is also fairly flat as well, but I hate out-and-backs so this section isn’t as fun for me. Once I got back to Jay, I made the turn towards Wilmington, it is climbing time! The stretch to Wilmington is about 5 miles of mostly climbing. It is pretty consistent grade so you can get in a rhythm and just spin away. It isn’t too bad.

Ausable River Valley-Jay, NY

The stretch from Wilmington back to Lake Placid is kind of a false flat push. It is very deceiving. Once you get past the narrow canyon section it isn’t too bad. The wind had started to pick up a bit by this time and it always seems to just get funneled through this river valley and amplified. When I reached the last uphill section before Lake Placid, known as the “three bears”, my legs were feeling a bit tired and my mind was starting to struggle with the fact that I had to do another loop. I cruised through town and then stopped back at the house to refill water bottles. After that I was ready for another round.

Lap One Done. Future Finish Line

I was now at around 60 miles with all the back-and-forth to the house on River Road, so I decided to chop off the Ausable Forks section…Yay!! I only wanted to do 100 miles so without that it would give me another 40 miles. They key parts for me are to do the hilly sections anyway. Once back out on the second loop, my legs were feeling good again. In fact, my legs were feeling better as I went. The only thing that really bothered me was my ass. Six plus hours in the saddle is a bit rough on the derrière.

Now on my third loop of this course in two days. Going over this road that many times you start to become intimately familiar with every pothole, beer can, bolt and other rusty metal artifact along the road. It was almost to the point where you start naming these things. What else do you do for this long on a bike? I wondering if they will still be there in a month and half? Ok..back to reality again. There was a Mountain Bike festival in Wilmington this weekend, so there were a lot of fat tire aficionados out and about. Roadies and Mountain bikers…could get a little tense.

The winds had picked up to a pretty heavy gust. I could not figure out which way the wind was coming from though. When I went by the North Pole hotel and campground there were two flags next to each other and each one was stretched out in directions pointing towards each other? Huh? I did a double-take..how could that be? Oh it be! The wind does some crazy things heading through this valley. Eventually I made it back to River Road and headed back to the house.

I ended up with 103 miles in around 6:25. I am pretty happy with that since I was not trying to crush it. I really wanted to see how the legs felt and if I needed to go slower. I felt pretty good and I even headed out for a short 20 minute brick run just to really see what the legs were like to run on. They really felt great. If I didn’t have a long run tomorrow and Denise didn’t want to go out for dinner I would have kept going. Ha…oh well.

We got cleaned up and headed over to Alegria Garden Café some dinner. I had vegetable spring rolls and vegetable pot-pie and Denise had a Rabbit-Oatmeal Confit appetizer and Salmon on Quinoa for dinner. Everything was very good. They also have homemade bread which was out of this world. The place was not real busy, which surprised me a bit. It is quite good, so I am not sure why they don’t get more people.

After dinner, we headed home and it didn’t take me too long to start the head bobbing. I called it a day and crawled into bed for a good nights sleep. Tomorrow should be interesting with a 2:45 run on what I expected to be some stiff legs in the morning. We would then have to pack up on my return and head out for the long drive home.